Eye on poll alignments, SAD goes soft on BSP after Sarbat Khalsa

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, November 24

Even as the SAD has been taking on the Congress for its leaders participating in Sarbat Khalsa, it has clearly spared the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) whose state president Avtar Singh Karimpuri had also attended the event at Amritsar.

The move has raised a number of questions on the alleged internal equations between the two parties ahead of the 2017 Assembly polls. The BSP, considered to be the SAD’s B-team for elections, has reportedly been contesting on all 117 assembly seats in Punjab, which has been indirectly coming as a big disadvantage for the Congress owing to the splitting of the Dalit vote bank.

The internal settings between the two parties, however, have always been denied both by the SAD and the BSP’s national secretary Narinder Kashyap. 

But with political equations fast changing, the SAD is perhaps keeping options open for an arrangement. 

The BSP leaders are said to have internally supported the Congress in the last Lok Sabha polls and the fall in the vote bank of the BSP came as a big advantage for the Congress that won by a thumping margin of 70,981 votes from Jalandhar in 2014. 

The votebank of the BSP at Adampur fell from 25,000 to 7,000 and at Phillaur from 40,000 to barely 13,408 just in two years. BSP’s Sukhwinder Kotli at Adampur and Baldev Khera at Phillaur have otherwise been active party workers with a huge following in the two reserved seats. 

The participation of Karimpuri in the rally and holding of two big state-level rallies by the BSP in Adampur last year and at Banga two months back in the areas of CPS Pawan Tinu and SAD’s constituency in-charge Dr Sukhwinder Sukhi are also being taken as an indication in the same direction. Both Tinu and Dr Sukhi were earlier with the BSP. 

But with Assembly polls both in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh lined up around the same time and SAD’s former leader Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, who had been reportedly coordinating for the SAD in Punjab and former CM and BSP supremo Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, joining the Samajwadi Party, there seems to be an altered alignment in sight. SAD too was helping the BSP in return, in the Punjabi-speaking areas of UP. The probability of BSP and Congress joining hands is more likely,” said a political observer.   

But the Congress leaders do not want a tie-up with the BSP. “When earlier, we used to enter an arrangement with the BSP, we made big leaps in Dalit-dominated seats but seat sharing always remained an issue. Also, after the alliance snapped, we were losers as whatever SC vote bank we had, moved with them,” said a prominent Dalit Congress leader from Doaba.